Learn Anything with Google and YouTube

The Internet contains most of all human knowledge and
experience. You can find most
information faster than you can find your car keys using a search engine like
Google. For almost anything you want to
learn there will be multiple articles and often video clips demonstrating a feature
or technique that you want to learn.

Searching on Google is something of an art. Learn a few simple strategies and you will
almost always be able to find help for almost anything you want to know.

For example, I saw a video of the 2007 Crossroads Concert where an energetic young woman played bass with Jeff Beck. I was impressed both with her playing and the generous stage time that Jeff Beck gave her to shine. A search on Google at www.google.com with the keywords girl
bass player jeff beck and today Google will list a Wikipedia article
about Tal Wilkenfeld and a YouTube clip of the performance. You can learn in a few minutes how a young
woman earned a spot on stage with one of the greatest guitarists of all time.

Say you have a new computer and do not know where to
start. Sometimes there are tutorials
available on the computer, though you may not know how to find them. A search like how to use windows 7 will
provide a number of links to introductory articles on the user interface. You can search for information of OS X,
Windows 8, Linux, macramé, poker, or anything else you want to know. Not all links will be helpful for your
question, though a few quick looks will often find the gold.

The magic is in the keywords used for the search

A search list that is too broad will bring back millions of
pages that are not what you are looking for.
A search list that is too specific may miss what you are looking
for. You may need to think of synonym
and anticipate how someone may have described something.

By the way, if you are writing Internet content that you
want people to find, it is a good idea to try to anticipate what people may be
searching for and make sure that you include keywords for the search engine to
find. Words that only exist in graphics
are invisible to search engines.

Sometimes a video demonstration will help when words do
not. If fifty percent of the words of a
written description are new to you, then a video can help. YouTube has millions of videos and a growing
number of videos demonstrating specific techniques.

A search at www.YouTube.com
for introduction to windows 7 will
provide many videos for beginners. A
search for how to do green screen weather report will reveal some green
screen techniques and quite a few examples of green screen gone wrong!

Now for your homework, try searching of anything useful or
entertaining on Google and YouTube to see what you can find. The trick is to get the right collection of
keywords that are neither too broad nor two narrow. Have fun!